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I don’t live in Lancaster, so I don’t really care very much whether its rude, glibertarian supervisor, Dino Fudoli, fails or succeeds. However, Wednesday’s Buffalo News published a profile of Fudoli which revealed that some are turned off by his aggressive, obnoxious behavior, and that he’s occasionally willing to take unpopular stands. BFD.

But it also featured this quote:

“Sometimes I feel like I’m on an island, that nobody else is looking out for the taxpayers but me. People need to start waking up and realizing that the government’s not their friend, the government’s their enemy,”

I added the emphasis there, because it took me aback. I had to re-read that second sentence several times. Here’s a sitting supervisor – the government executive for a municipal entity – informing his constituents that he’s their enemy – after all, he is the chief executive of that government. That their neighbors are their enemy.

What does government do? It provides us with the foundation for a civilized society. Because our government(s) are representative democracies, the government is us. The people who work as clerks and highway workers and teachers crossing guards and cops and firefighters and librarians and assessors and plow drivers and garbagemen – you know, these guys (NSFW):

These people do hard work, and they’re not monsters or the enemy or Hitler or Tojo or mad King George. They’re your neighbors. They’re your family and friends. They’re also part of “government”. Do you think they’re your “enemy“?

I can’t think of a more fundamentally stupid notion than for an American elected official to promote the notion that government is the people’s enemy. Even if you disagree with a person or a policy or how money is being spent – do you think Boehner or Pelosi or Obama or Romney are your enemy? Do you think that your town supervisor or your county legislator are your enemy? Do you operate under the mindset that, if the town of Lancaster thinks that it really needs another cop, and the entire town board votes to hire a new cop – these people are all your enemy, and here’s Dino Fudoli to protect you from the tyranny of the extra cop?

Fudoli is promoting not just a ridiculous, tea-partyist, idiotic idea of town government as someone’s “enemy”, but brewing up a recipe for anger, aggression, violence, and harm. It’s much, much easier for some lunatic to commit a physical assault of some sort on a government official if he’s been told by some simpleton that this official is the “enemy”. You go to war with enemies. Anyone with an ounce of decency should condemn this fundamentally un-American, un-democratic view of what our system of government is, especially on the local level.